CLIFTON FORGE — My first view of the City of Clifton Forge was through an Amtrak railcar’s window in May of 1959.
McDowell High School’s senior class of 58 students was heading to Washington D.C. and New York City on its five-day senior trip.
Schools in America were different in those days, and James B. Conant’s influence that led to the consolidation movement that has eliminated so many small high schools in America had yet to gain a full head-of-steam.
Neither had President Dwight David Eisenhower’s Federal Aid Highway Act that he signed on June 29, 1956 resulted in the construction of I-64 being started, much less completed. Consequently, from Eastern Kentucky to New York City by school bus was out of the question.
The Federal Aid Highway Act has had a positive impact on Virginia in that it has resulted in the four-lane highway entering Virginia from Tennessee in Bristol (recently upgraded to a six-lane in that area) and stretching 324 miles in a northeasterly direction across the state where it enters West Virginia near Winchester.
By the time I had completed my studies at Morehead State University, 1959-1965, where I earned my B.A. degree with a double major in English and physical education and my M.A. degree in secondary education, I-64 was under construction.
It now runs through both Morehead and Clifton Forge and requires under six hours of driving time to complete a trip between the two, including the two stops at toll booths to pay $4 each stop while traveling on the West Virginia Turnpike portion.
Before the summer of 1971, I had taught journalism, creative writing and physical education while coaching both varsity baseball and basketball at Lewis County High School in Vanceburg, Ky. from 1963-1965, had taught English and coached baseball, football and cross country at Fraser High School near Detroit from 1965-1968 and had coached basketball and baseball at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, Calif. where I taught English and physical education.
Before I-64 had been completed, my cousin, S.T. Allen and I, traveled in the late 1960s on U.S. Route 60 from Ky. through Clifton Forge to go camping in Virginia Beach. During our drive, we drove by my future bride’s home located beside U.S. Route 60 in Oakdale Park between the City of Clifton Forge and Sharon Elementary School where all four of our children would one day attend the same school my wife-to-be had attended.
By the time another cousin of mine, Mitch Thomas, Jr., a principal in the Garden Grove Unified School District in Garden Grove, Calif., and I were driving from Virginia Beach to Roanoke in Aug. of 1971, I had no idea that Virginia’s Interstate Highway System would factor into changing my life forever.
Mitch, who had been my college roommate, and I found ourselves stranded beside the highway inside Roanoke’s city limits where my 1965 Corvette Stingray had thrown a wheel bearing. Berglund Chevrolet could not find wheel bearings to fix my Corvette, and after a while, I called Oliver Elam, my uncle who owned a service station in Louisville, Ky., to ask him to ship wheel bearings via airfreight to Berglund Chevrolet.
The mysterious breakdown in Roanoke would never have happened there had it not been for the completion of parts of the Interstate Highway System that helped make our trip from Virginia Beach to Roanoke faster because more than likely the wheel bearings would have caused the breakdown in some rural area of Va. east of Roanoke had we been traveling on crooked and mountainous, two-lane highways.
Ironically, Mitch and I had driven from Detroit through Canada to Montreal and down the East Coast to visit two of our friends we thought were playing football for the Norfolk Neptune that summer. After arriving in Virginia Beach and finding that they were playing for the Roanoke Buckskins instead, we headed west, eventually winding up in Roanoke broken down beside the highway.
While waiting for Berglund Chevrolet to repair my Corvette, Mitch and I attended our friends’ football game at Victory Stadium, and after the game, we attended a party at the Crystal Tower, a 1931 art deco hotel in Roanoke where the Buckskin’s cheerleaders were hosting a party for the players.
At the party, I met my wife-to-be, Cherie Suzanne Davis from Clifton Forge. Before the party, she had performed as the lead vocalist with the Freddie Lee Orchestra at Hotel Roanoke. She had served as Miss Virginia in 1968, finishing in the Top Ten in the Miss America Pageant where she won the talent division she competed in as a vocalist.
By Dec. of 1971, she had moved to Long Beach, Ca. to perform as a vocalist with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. While she was not singing and touring she was serving as a substitute music teacher in the GGUSD, thanks to Mitch, our best man on Aug. 5, 1973.
While living in Calif., Cherie and I traveled on I-40 across country several times to visit her parents, Walter Davis, Jr. and Judith Davis, who were living in the same home I had driven past on my way to Virginia Beach. In Tennessee, I-40 leads to I-81 before veering off to cross North Carolina to Wilmington. The trip by car from Long Beach to Clifton Forge took about 48 hours of driving time thanks to I-40 and I-81.
By the time I was hired to coach the varsity basketball team at Alleghany County High School on Aug. 28, 1978, we had a son, Landon Ray Allen who turned one on the day that I signed the contract. The late Bill Lumpkin interviewed me and took a photo of the three of us, Cherie holding Landon in her arms. The photo and interview was published in the “Covington Virginian.”
At that time, I-64 had not been completed beyond Clifton Forge. After moving to Clifton Forge from Los Alamitos, Ca. during the summer of 1979, I often jogged along I-64 that was still under construction from Clifton Forge to Lexington. Today, I-64 connects with I-77 in West Virginia and I-81 in Lexington where the two merge as one until splitting apart near Staunton where I-81 continues north toward Winchester and I-64 continues east to intersect with I-95 in Richmond.
Currently, I-81 is 855 miles long, and the 324 portion from Bristol, Va. to West Va. represents the longest stretch than in any other state, contributing to the Virginia’s economic development that has also been enhanced by the completion of I-95, I-195, I-295, I-395 and I-495; I-81, I-381 and I-581.
The branches of Interstate off I-64 are I-264, I-464, I-564 and I-654. Other branches that complete the Virginia network of Interstate Highways are I-66, I-73 and I-77.
As I was driving to Alleghany County High School on the newly completed part of I-64 in 1978, I spotted an owl perched like a hitchhiker beside I-64 in Clifton Forge. I cut my speed, pulled over and rescued the nearly-frozen creature that was suffering from a broken wing. After its wing had mended, I returned the owl to the exact spot on I-64 where I had found it, tossed the healed creature into the air and watched it fly off into the woods.
Many memories remain about traveling Virginia’s Interstate Highways, some good and some not so good, ones like having my Dodge Colt station wagon break down near Lewisburg, West Va. on I-64 while I was driving students on a field trip to West Virginia University and ones like becoming stranded with my family in our Chevy Astro Van on I-81 during a snowstorm in Christiansburg that resulted in an overnight stay in a motel after I finally reached an exit.
I drove Landon back and forth from VMI on I-64 many times while he was a cadet, and I drove Cherie from Clifton Forge to the Stonewall Jackson Hospital in Lexington years later to visit him after his car hydroplaned and landed upside down in a ditch near the I-64 Goshen exit. Fortunately, his injuries were minor, thanks to his seat belt being buckled. His accident happened years later after he had served 11 years in the military as an F-18 Hornet pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps and as a U.S. Air Force reservist.
Thanks to President Eisenhower, who upon his death in 1969 was transported from Washington D.C. through the City of Clifton Forge via train to be buried in Abilene, Kansas, the Interstate Highway System has linked the lower 48 states, making travel by motor vehicles from one place to another quicker. Had it not been for Ike, I may not have met my wife and wound up settling in Clifton Forge.
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